27 North Carolina Authors on the BooksThat Changed Their Livesed. David Perkills

Down Home Press, 1996

AgOOd book somehow finds the readers it was meant for. Its writer knowsthem "to the core, better even than weknow ourselves." They read it not byassignment, editor David Perkins assertsin Books of Passage, but only by their owndiscovery-most often in adolescence orearly adulthood."No wonder, then, that we rememberexactly where and how we found oursignificant book- how it smelled andfelt-and where we spent our privatemoments with it. Like our first love."Maybe. Some folks may have to stretcha little on this one. What if the only bookyou can remember reading all the waythrough on your own in your adolescencewas Herman Wouk's The Caine Mlltiny,and you just thought it was a cool storyabout a ship in a war and a captain twoMcNuggets shy of a Happy Meal?Not so, for 27 North Carolina authorswho, in columns originally published inTIle News & ObselVer of Raleigh, share thosemoments when they backilipped into fullbloom on account ofsomething they read.In the words of novelist Clyde Edgerton' 66, "it seemed as if [Emerson] had wlittensome sentences for no one but me."Half the writers either studied at UNC,teach here, or taught here.This is where some ofthem are comingfrom:Louis Rubin, emeritus professor ofEnglish, writer and founder of AJgonquinBooks, said, "What most people fail torealize is that literaulre is not wlitten out oflife, but out of books." Thomas Wolfe'sLook H omeward, A~lgel is his choice."... [T]he Wolfe novels were about beinga writer, and among other things, what theypromised me was that my own middle-class circumstance, my experience ofgrowing up in a small Southern city,could as appropriately become the stuffofart as might a romantic voyage on thewine-dark deep, castles in Spain or cafesin Paris."Wtitings ofand from the South, pre-dictably, caught the attention of several.Fred Hobson ' 65, now an English professorhere, became aware of his Southenmess andits significance through W.]. Cash's Mindof the South-a book he has since foundfraught with narrowness ofview. Ironicallyhe went away to read it-to Oregon inthe surruner of 1964-just as the Southwas exploding into the national eye.The Agrarians' I'll Take My Stand ledsociology professor John Shelton R eed toexplore what Southernness "is" and tomake a living at it.Too deep for you Howard Owen ' 71chose the Chip Hilton series about theall-American boy athlete. "They showedme how a story should be told," saidOwen, a 25-year newspaperman. Anotherreporter, Tom Wicker ' 48, recalled not abook at all but the weekly SaturdayEvenillg Post.For Doris Betts ' 54, novelist and Englishprofessor, Hurlbut's Story if the BibleforYOllllg arid Old "taught me the shape ofurgent plot with serious issues at stake. Itbliefed me at a young age on the manybiblical allusions to be later found inWestern literature." Not to downplay theinfluence of cowboy books. "The pullbetween these two literatures can be seenin almost everything I have wtitten since."William Leuchtenburg, histOlY professorand New Deal scholar, was a New Yorkteenager with nothing much ofthe Southother than negative stereotypes, until hecame upon Jonathan Daniels' A SouthernerDisCOl/ers the SOl/th. "In 1982, after 30 yearsof teaching at Columbia University, I haddecided to abandon New York to spendthe rest of my days in the South," he said."A number of influences led to the deci-sion. But the inclination to explore andsettle in another land began the day I cameupon a passage in Daniels' book wherean obscure Arkansas country lawyer, hisshelves lined with volumes on fann ten-ancy, inquires whether Daniels knowsHoward Odum and Rupert Vance, twoicons of liberal sociology. He does. 'That'sa great University in Chapel Hill,' theman replies."Captain Queeg pales. But I didn't knowyo u co uld co unt C hip Hilto n .(Col/tim/ed on Page 84)